Marx to Engels

Abstract

July 5, 1870

Chernyshevsky, I learnt from Lopatin, was sentenced in 1864 to eight years’ travaux forcés in the Siberian mines; so he has another two years to serve. The first court was decent enough to declare that there was absolutely nothing against him and that the alleged secret conspiratorial letters were obvious forgeries (which, indeed, they were). But, by order of the Tsar, the Senate overruled this judgment and sent the cunning man, who is “so skilful,” as the sentence puts it, “that he keeps his works in a legally invulnerable form and yet openly pours out poison in them,” to Siberia. Voilà la justice russe.

Flerovsky is in a better position. He is simply in administrative exile in some miserable little place between Moscow and St. Petersburg.